Convergence
by T. Bryson
Summary: In one universe, a three-pronged war of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies; in the other, a hard-won and fragile peace after a devastating extragalactic invasion. When the two converge, nothing can be the same.
1. Foreword

Foreword

I've been reading fanfiction off-and-on for a pretty long time. I signed up for this site nearly 10 years ago. One constant through those 10 years is that I've generally avoided reading crossovers.

I never had anything against the concept itself—after all, what could be better than combining two awesome fictional properties, creating a situation where beloved characters from each have to interact in interesting ways? It's hard to think of any downsides.

The problem is that, in practice, crossovers can become very confusing. It's hard to bring two universes together in a way that doesn't strain a reader's suspension of disbelief. You can only ask so much of your audience, and you're _already _asking them to be familiar with two fictional properties instead of the usual single property.

So, I avoided them. I certainly never thought I'd want to write one myself.

But here I am, writing a crossover. The idea for _Convergence _popped into my head a month or two ago and just wouldn't get out. Soon enough I was sitting at work chewing through notepads with the ideas that popped into my head every few minutes. The wheel was turning and I prefer not to stop that flow once it's started. After all, what could be the harm in giving a Star Wars/Mass Effect crossover a shot?

So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give this a shot, and see where it takes me. I'm going to try to make this story as easy to follow as I can, for Star Wars fans who aren't familiar with Mass Effect, for Mass Effect fans who might not be familiar with Star Wars, and for people who are familiar with both. There will probably be a character or two—or lots of them—that you don't recognize, and I'm going to try my best to help you get to know them.

**Two very important facts should be pointed out**: The Mass Effect half of this story mostly follows the established game canon of a Paragon male Commander Shepard who chose to Destroy the Reapers, but there will be references to my post-Mass Effect 3 fanfiction _You Came Back to Me_; and the Star Wars half of this story not only uses a slightly tweaked, alternate timeline, but also utilizes characters from the Star Wars expanded universe.

**If you're not familiar with the Star Wars expanded universe, and/or if you didn't read **_**You Came Back to Me**_**, my intent is to ensure that this story is still easy enough to follow, if the premise interests you. **

If I haven't managed to scare you away, then I hope you'll join me in giving this thing a shot. Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter One

There were, reflected the captain of the Super Star Destroyer _Executor_, few sights more impressive than a naval force of the Galactic Empire. Visible through the forward viewports of his own massive vessel's command bridge, beyond the 20,000-meter expanse of gray metal and bristling turbolasers which formed his ship's hull, were three _Victory_-class Star Destroyers, majestic as they drifted at varying angles through the deep blackness of space; and there, too, off to the side, was a larger _Imperial-II_ Star Destroyer, the likes of which represented the bulk of Imperial presence in the galaxy, and whose mere silhouette was enough to strike fear into the hearts of malcontents and lawbreakers everywhere.

The captain frowned. An impressive task force, indeed ... now if only he knew its purpose. The Empire's shrinking fleet was spread very thin lately. Their mission, then, had to be of great importance. With five war vessels allocated to its completion—one being a _Super_ Star Destroyer, no less, one of only four in the entire Navy—anything else was unthinkable.

Then again, maybe it was just bad resource management. It wouldn't have been the first time Han saw Imperial command make a bad decision.

A familiar voice, deep and cultured, emerged from behind him.. "Are you enjoying the view, Captain Solo?"

Captain Han Solo turned halfway to acknowledge the speaker with a wry grimace. "Sure. Real pretty."

His superior officer and longtime mentor came to a stop beside him, clasping hands as blue as the rest of him behind his back, a faint smile on his purplish lips. In the dim lighting of the bridge, the shrewd, glowing red eyes on his hard angular face stood out even more prominently than usual, providing a colorful contrast to the impeccable white of his uniform and the blue-black of his hair.

Han remembered the first time he'd seen the Chiss, while he was still a student at the naval academy, almost a decade earlier. A nonhuman wearing the uniform of an Imperial officer—and teaching human recruits—had been jarring at the time, considering the Emperor's anti-alien policies; but Grand Admiral Thrawn had proven himself more than worthy of his title, particularly in recent months, standing very nearly as the only obstacle between the Empire and its enemies.

The two stood there at the viewport for a moment, watching the task force drift through the vacuum. When Thrawn spoke again, it was quietly and gravely. "We've received an update from the fleet, in Shelsha sector."

Han tried to keep his voice casual despite the dread suddenly clawing up his throat. "And?"

Silence. Then: "They are pulling out."

Han's chest tightened beneath the captain's rank bars on his gray uniform. It felt as though, every day, another part of the galaxy slipped out of their grasp. He was getting sick of it. "We should have been there," he said darkly, knowing it was poor protocol but not really caring. Thrawn has always been more indulgent of his outspoken behavior—and stubbornly unkempt dark brown hair—than anyone else in the officer corps, the majority of whom scorned him for his perceived lack of culture. "Not—_here_." He gestured vaguely out the viewport. "Wherever _here_ is."

"I assure you, Captain, I did not pull these Star Destroyers off of the frontlines lightly," Thrawn said softly. "I would not have done so without a very good reason."

Han took in a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Of course he knew that. Years of learning military strategy directly from the Chiss had taught him that much. But Thrawn operated on a different, more complex plane of mental function, one Han didn't have the patience for, and all he could see were five Star Destroyers that should have been fighting for an imperiled sector. "I know," he said, managing to keep exasperation out of the words. "We're going to be _told_ that reason sometime soon, right?"

Thrawn gazed out at one of the _Victory_-class Star Destroyers for a second longer-the _Judgment_, Han tentatively identified it. "Now, as it happens," the Chiss admiral said, swiveling on his polished heel and beginning to walk briskly back down the length of the bridge walkway. "This way, if you would."

Han, taken aback, could at first only stare at Thrawn's retreating form; and then he recovered his composure and followed, hastening his first few paces as surreptitiously as possible to catch up.

The crew pits on either side of the walkway were a hive of activity, even when the _Executor _was at a standstill. Countless reports were always streaming in from every department of the vessel, from engineering to fighter aviation, from the stormtrooper platoons to supply acquisition. Crewmen working at their stations tapped busily at their computer interfaces, conversed in low tones, and cut purposeful routes to wherever their duties took them, often carrying datapads with relevant information.

One of these men, a smooth-faced youth, looked up at the passing officers. He couldn't have been a day over sixteen, but Han was in no place to complain; he'd joined the Navy young, too, and in any case, the Empire was taking any recruits it could get nowadays. "Incoming transmissions from the task force commanders, Admiral," he called out.

"Thank you, lieutenant," Thrawn replied without breaking step or so much as looking down in the young man's direction. Han's lips twitched upward into a crooked half-grin. The admiral's ability to memorize every subordinate under his command never stopped being impressive. "I will receive them at the aft comm station."

Han's mind raced all the way to the semi-circular collection of displays and consoles that made up the bridge's aft communications station. Hiding the mission's objective from the captain of an involved ship; pulling those ships out of the hotspots of a grim and increasingly hopeless war—all signs pointed to an objective of a highly sensitive nature.

It had been three months since Han was made the _Executor_'s captain. In that time, he had been frustrated by the inglorious skirmish battles his vessel had been assigned to, so achingly far from the worst of the fighting. He understood the need to keep a ship like his around as long as possible, and how war vessels were chewed up quickly in the major confrontations … but he still felt a stirring of excitement at the thought that, maybe this time, his command would truly be able to make a difference.

That was, after all, why he'd signed up in the first place.

Thrawn stepped onto the circular holo-transmitter that would allow his likeness to be relayed to the individuals on the other end of the communication. He nodded his head toward the identical transmitter beside him, signaling for Han to position himself on it. The captain obliged, and, at another nod from the blue-skinned Chiss, pressed a button on the nearest interface.

Instantly, four shimmering blue holograms flickered into life on a raised console before them, standing at a quarter of the size of their actual senders. Han recognized only one of them personally, standing on the rightmost side of the group: the dignified-looking Captain Gilad Pellaeon, of the Star Destroyer _Chimaera_, with sharp eyes glaring out under the shadow of his officer's cap and a bristling silver mustache covering his thin upper lip. The other three, of the _Victory-_class Star Destroyers, were unfamiliar to him, beyond their brief introductions hours before, but they all fit the usual profile of an Imperial officer, with severe expressions, clean-cut hair, and ramrod-straight military postures.

"Captains Awler, Hansen, Pellaeon, Trenton," Thrawn greeted them solemnly, nodding to each in turn. "I presume your ships stand ready, as per your orders."

There was a chorus of affirmation. Thrawn turned his glittering red eyes to the holographic depiction of Pellaeon. "And the refitting of the _Chimaera_?"

"The modifications are installed and functioning properly," Pellaeon replied, smoothly enough but sounding a little bemused.

_Modifications? _Han frowned. More information he hadn't been aware of.

Pellaeon, meanwhile, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. "With all due respect, admiral, when will we be—"

"Informed of their purpose?" Thrawn supplied for him, voice mild.

Pellaeon pursed his lips, gave a curt nod. "Yes, sir."

Thrawn's gaze swept over the four holograms. "As I was just telling Captain Solo—" A blue hand indicated Han. "—the time for secrecy has passed."

All eyes turned to Han for a moment, and he unconsciously adjusted his uniform under his colleagues' disapproving appraisal. They'd seemed friendly enough before, but now he could have sworn he felt resentment from them. Did the idea of the officer corps' very own mutt getting first claim to information bother them?

His eyes locked momentarily with Pellaeon's. The two were longtime rivals, having both been taken under Thrawn's wing, leading to an endless competition to be his finest protégé. No doubt, Han thought with an inward smile, Pellaeon suspected that Thrawn might have told him the secret already. He wondered how the older captain would react if he tried to explain that they were in the same boat on this one. In all likelihood, the response would involve a great deal of huffy skepticism.

Thrawn coughed politely; attention returned to him, Pellaeon's eyes dragging themselves as if with great effort away from Han. "Gentlemen," the Chiss announced, "it is my pleasure to inform you that we have obtained the current location of the Rebel Alliance leadership."

The reactions were immediate and varied. Pellaeon's was the least pronounced, his muscles tensing visibly. Two of the smaller ship captains managed to contain their surprise enough so that they only stiffened, one of them breathing in sharply. The fourth captain was less fortunate, looking up like a nerf caught in the landing lights and making a spectacular show of dropping a datapad that was being handed to him from outside his transmitter circle.

Han nodded slowly, his heartbeat picking up. So that was it—they'd found the insurgent leaders, at last. They'd been at war with the Rebel Alliance for an interminably long time; the conflict had always been damaging, but had been especially so over the last couple of standard years. A fair amount of Imperial Intelligence resources had gone toward finding the heads of the organization and incapacitating them, but always the effort had been in vain, with the Rebels having honed their fugitive lifestyle into an art form.

"That explains the secrecy," he muttered, dimly aware that he was speaking aloud. "If word had got out…"

"Yes," Thrawn confirmed, nodding. "Too many operations against the Rebels have been compromised by internal leaks. We could not afford that risk now."

There was a brief and chilly silence. Han resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Typical Imperial pride. The captains—with the exception of himself and, almost assuredly, Pellaeon—had chosen to take offense at the implication that any one of them couldn't be trusted with such sensitive information. If the Empire had one weakness, it was the small-mindedness of so many of its leaders.

Wounded pride wasn't enough to dampen the mood for long. Captain Awler, of average stature and with a pronounced jaw, clenched and unclenched his fists excitedly. "Finally," he breathed, his accent the same as every other Core world enlistee, clipped and elegant. Han had always rather felt that it encouraged a good punch to the face. "We can crush the Rebel scum and push them aside. With them out of the way we will _quickly _turn all this around."

"This…intelligence," another of the captains, Trenton, said slowly—and a little stiffly, Han thought. Perhaps the tall, dark-faced man was still nursing the wound from Thrawn's perceived slight on his honor. "Are we certain it's reliable, admiral?"

"What does it matter?" Pellaeon retorted. "If there's even a _chance _of cutting off the head of the Rebel Alliance, would you not take it?"

"We're losing worlds every day," Trenton snapped. "For us to go on a wild bantha chase while—"

"The intelligence," Thrawn said, softly but with a coolness that instantly cut off further debate, "comes from a source whose information has proven most fruitful in the past. I do not believe this instance will be any different."

"Yes, admiral," Trenton mumbled. It didn't look as though the assurance had done much for him, but even the most brusque members of the officer corps knew that getting into a debate with Grand Admiral Thrawn was a losing proposition.

"This is a rare chance we've been given," Thrawn went on, crossing his arms over his chest. "The leaders of the Rebel Alliance are rarely gathered in one place, to avoid giving us just such an opportunity.

"The objective, of course, is to incapacitate them and either capture or destroy the data they have accumulated within this base. The Emperor would prefer that we take prisoners alive for questioning purposes, but if that proves impossible, their deaths are acceptable."

"The Emperor?" Captain Hansen, nearly as tall as Trenton but with a much less impressive frame, seemed to pale. It may have been a trick of Han's eyes, or erratic behavior from the hologram transmitter. "He's—involved? _Personally?_"

"The eyes of the Empire are on you, Captain Hansen," a new voice said from beside Han, one that immediately sent a chill down his spine. "As they are on all of you."

It was the booming mechanical voice of Darth Vader.

Turning his head, Han saw the Dark Lord—intimidatingly tall, shrouded in his black cloak, matching black armor gleaming in the dim lighting, his rhythmic breathing lending itself to the soundtrack of activity on the bridge—taking up residence on the remaining transmitter at the comm station. Every captain displayed via hologram managed somehow to stiffen even more than they had at the revelation that they would be assaulting a Rebel headquarters; several audible swallows sounded from their direction.

Han didn't blame them. He respected Vader—every Navy man did—but there was a coldness to him, a real and undeniable distance. He was an entity apart from the rest of them, the very nature of his role in the Empire nebulous; was he the Emperor's enforcer? Was he the heir apparent to the throne? Or was he leader of some secret Imperial agency that none of them were privy to? Whatever the case, he was a universally recognizable symbol of Palpatine's New Order. There were rumors that he could even kill a man without moving a muscle. Han, prone to disregard such nonsense, couldn't comment on such gossip regardless; he'd never met Vader face-to-face before taking him on board the _Executor_ when they'd left Imperial Center, two days before, and after a brief and cordial introduction the Dark Lord had retreated to his private quarters, not emerging until now.

For his own part, Han showed none of the signs of tension that his peers did, past the initial chill. He would never have chosen a fight with Vader, but he'd always found him to be a melodramatic and unnecessary attempt at scaring the galaxy's citizens into obedience, the kind of ploy he disdained. Admittedly, it was harder to dismiss him as such when he was standing so close, filling the bridge with his presence.

There was not even a twitch of surprise from Thrawn at the unexpected appearance. If the Chiss had _ever_ been surprised, Han had yet to see it. "The Emperor has every reason to be invested in the success of this mission, Captain," the admiral said, addressing Hansen and the others. "Success here could be the difference between the continued survival of the Empire we all serve and its downfall. The Rebel Alliance may well never recover from losing so many of its most vital leaders in one swoop, and that becomes a near certainty if we are able to obtain valuable secrets through questioning those individuals. Failure is unacceptable."

"Yes, sir," all of the captains—with the exception of Han— said with uncanny synchronization. Maybe Vader _wasn't _redundant. A little intimidation was apparently all it took to whip Imperial officers into shape. It was as good a reason as any for the Emperor to have sent the Dark Lord along.

"Good," Thrawn said approvingly, his arms falling from his chest so that he could clasp his hands behind his back. "Now listen closely. Here is how we will proceed…"

* * *

Once upon a time, Luke Skywalker might have found the cramped corridors and close quarters of AOH-113 to be unbearable, downright irritating, having grown up on the open, endless deserts of Tatooine.

Now, though, it was just another part of the routine. Years of serving with the Rebel Alliance had given him a crash course in dealing with uncomfortably tight physical conditions. AOH-113 was the most recent base he'd been stationed on— this one built atop a sizable asteroid, which, in turn, was hidden in an asteroid field—but there'd been dozens of others in the last year alone. It was the constantly moving life of the insurgent, unwelcome on any law-abiding world, unable and unwilling to get too comfortable at any one location.

And it was sure a far cry from life on Tatooine.

Then again, the young Jedi Knight thought to himself with a sardonic smile as he weaved through the small groups of idealists and freedom fighters milling through the asteroid base's hallways, maybe he hadn't come so far after all. He'd left Tatooine as a wide-eyed farmboy, ready to fight the injustices of the Empire; and now he was a wide-eyed Jedi, locked in a bitter and unending conflict with that same Empire, hiding from prying eyes on a little planetoid not far from his homeworld.

_Sometimes it feels like we're not moving forward at all. Like we've been drowning in quicksand—no, not quicksand. _

_Darkness_.

Ever since Endor. Ever since a sweeping, yawning shadow had swept into the galaxy, threatening to swallow them all whole; his friends, the men and women he'd been fighting with and for since this all began, even his enemies—

Even his father.

Luke shook the foreboding idea from his mind, as he'd been forced to do with increasing frequency of late. It wouldn't do to get caught up on dread, not when his friends still needed his help. Not when everyone had their own fear to conquer, without adding his on top of the mix.

He reached the hangar bay—making worse time than he really should have, thanks to the heavy corridor traffic—and took a quick scan of the situation before arriving. Good; he wasn't late. By the looks of things, he needn't have worried about trailing behind the others. The small group waiting to greet the incoming shuttle was still assembling, no more immune to packed hallways than he was.

A few familiar faces were gathered already. Luke felt an irrepressible grin breaking across his face as he strode across the scuffed metal floor of the hangar, ducking under the wing of the occasional parked starfighter. "Lando!"

AOH-113's—indeed, the Alliance's—resident gambler, entrepreneur and lady's man extraordinaire turned away from the hazy blue light of the hangar entrance to shoot a dazzling smile in Luke's direction. Dark-skinned, with rich black hair and a perfectly trimmed mustache that was equal parts business and playboy, Lando Calrissian fit into the ragtag Alliance through virtue of his incongruity; when one thought 'freedom fighter,' someone like him rarely came to mind. "_There _you are," he said, reaching out and giving Luke's upper arm a squeeze as the Jedi drew closer. "Was starting to think you'd forgotten."

"That wouldn't be very Jedi-like, would it?" Luke countered.

Lando's expression became speculative. "No, I guess it wouldn't." He nodded out toward the starscape, where the light reflected off a small shuttle's hull was drawing closer. "She didn't sound too happy when they called in for landing clearance."

Luke's grin faded. Now that Lando mentioned it, he _could _sense upticks of concern coming from the ship. It was nothing urgent, but it remained nonetheless, like a nagging doubt that refused to be quashed. "Something's bothering her," he agreed softly.

"Pardon me, Master Luke, but she _did _just endure a week's voyage," a prim and tinny voice volunteered. "Perhaps she is merely feeling the physical impacts of such confinement."

Luke's lips ruefully twitched upward again. "Hey, Threepio," he greeted the golden protocol droid, C-3PO, standing nearby with his omnipresent companion, a meter-tall white-and-blue astromech droid named R2-D2. "Hey, Artoo. Yeah, maybe that's it."

It wasn't, of course. But that didn't need to be said aloud. Threepio was just trying to be helpful, as always.

A few minutes later, the appropriate officials had joined the group and the boxy little shuttle had settled down onto its landing struts inside the hangar. While gases hissed out of exhaust ports and the aging engine whirred its way to deactivation, a small delegation of Alliance guards trooped down the landing ramp, weapons holstered, as well as several engineers; and behind them, dressed in a simple brown jumpsuit that managed somehow to look elegant on its wearer, came Princess Leia Organa.

The former Imperial senator, soft brown hair cut short, bangs pushed lightly aside, gave nods of greeting to the officers and leaders of the group, but her warm smile was reserved for Luke and Lando. Up close, the concern radiated from Leia more clearly than ever. Still, she endured the diplomacy of her reception with her usual diplomacy. After what felt like ages, the well-wishing was done, and as the bulk of the group wandered back to respective postings, she walked over to her friends.

"Leia," Lando, eyes twinkling. When she drew close enough, he drew her into a friendly hug. She returned it, pulling back after a moment with her nose wrinkled slightly.

"What is that _smell_?" She asked.

Lando somehow managed to grin even wider. "New cologne I picked up during that op on Kuat," he replied, flourishing his hands and inhaling theatrically. "It's called _Flower of Duro_."

Leia raised an eyebrow. "_Duro_? As in the _planet _Duro?"

"Yeah, I guess." Lando blinked. "Why?"

"Lando, Duro is one of the most polluted planets in the entire galaxy," Leia told him patiently. "I doubt flowers can even _grow _there."

Luke ran a hand over his mouth to disguise a smile. How he had missed the odor emanating from the consummate gambler, he didn't know; it really was an off-putting scent, subtle but increasingly noticeable the longer one remained in its proximity, a combination of smells that had no place in a grooming product. On the other hand, a Hutt might have found it pleasing.

Lando's lips quickly polarized direction. Looking from one amused friend to the other, he pulled up his collar and took a freshly tentative sniff. "Well, _I _thought it smelled good," he said defensively.

Shaking her head, Leia turned to Luke and embraced him. A thousand thoughts ran through Luke's mind, as they always did when he was around her.

_Sister. _She was his _sister_. Years after learning the fact, it was still strange, to think that twenty years of his life had passed before he'd known he had a sibling.

A sibling hidden away on the other side of the galaxy, to keep them safe from a father who'd fallen to the dark side and an Emperor who would have devious interest in their Force sensitivity.

And now she was troubled. Was it something _he'd _done? After all, he'd started to teach her the basics of Force usage a few months ago. A doubt he was growing accustomed to flickered through his mind. Was he really _ready _to teach anyone the ways of the Force? His own education had been so haphazard, so incomplete; he was still so desperate for knowledge, hunting the galaxy for surviving Holocrons, archived data, of the old Jedi Order, whenever he had a chance. What he'd found so far was so scarce, too little to give him any certainty.

There was no room for sloppiness in the teaching of a Jedi. There were too many disasters that could result if it went wrong.

The dark side was a tempting lure for a Force-sensitive without discipline.

"Are you okay?" He asked aloud, releasing Leia from his grip.

Leia's eyes met his, clearly aware that her doubts were not her own around him. "I'm fine," she sighed. "Really, I am."

"How did it go?" Lando asked, all traces of levity gone. His ability to switch from easygoing to businesslike in an instant had impressed Luke the day they met, in Mos Eisley, over five years ago. It still impressed him now. He often wondered which side of him was the more natural.

Leia closed her eyes, massaging her temple with one hand. "Fine," she said thoughtfully. "We were worried for nothing, apparently. There was absolutely nothing out of place. The complications look real enough, and innocent. But…"

"You still don't like it," Luke guessed, frowning. Leia had left over a week ago to check on the preparations of the next hideaway the Alliance was planning to use as a headquarters, preparations which had been moving far more slowly than usual.

"No," Leia admitted, hugging her arms to her chest. "I don't. We're far too exposed right now. You two are here, I'm here, Admiral Ackbar is here, along with a lot of our best mid-rank officers. We should've had more bases set up in this region a _long _time ago, to spread ourselves out. The delays seem innocent enough, but—I don't know. I just have a bad feeling."

"What exactly is holding them up?" Lando asked suspiciously. "I don't remember it ever taking this long to set up new bases before."

"Everything you can think of," Leia said wearily. "I got every reason, from the war making prospective systems too unstable, to materiel not getting shipped in fast enough, to outright sabotage, all the way down to disagreements between coordinators on where to set up."

"The war _is _pretty bad right now," Luke said, but it was a token observation and the doubt in his voice was obvious even to him. "But it's starting to look suspicious. You met with Pedric Cuf, didn't you?"

"Cuf," Lando echoed distantly. "That's the Imperial deserter, isn't it? The guy who came out of nowhere after Endor and gave us all kinds of juicy intel?"

"That's the one," Leia confirmed. "His information got us out of so many jams that everyone up to Mon Mothma trusts him implicitly. I did, too, even though I never met him until last week. Never had a reason not to, and the way everyone talks about him…"

The concern that had been nagging at her was now sending pronounced waves through the Force. Luke furrowed his brow. "Sounds like something changed your mind."

"What did you expect?" Lando scoffed. "Guy gets a reputation like that, he's bound to disappoint you when you finally meet him."

"He gave me all of those excuses, for one thing," Leia said. "I've been in a _lot _of negotiations with every type of being you can imagine, and I'm good at reading people." She paused, as though considering how to frame her explanation. "He talked too smoothly," she said after a second. "Like a politician, or a really good liar."

Lando's face darkened. "Sounds like your friendly neighborhood Imperial," he growled, and Luke remembered the reason Lando had been on Mos Eisley to take him off of Tatooine in the first place: his business venture had been taken over forcefully by the Empire, leaving him bitter and looking for revenge. That wound seemed doomed never to heal. "We sure this guy's really put the Empire behind him?"

"The story he gave us when he joined up checked out, or he wouldn't still be in the Alliance," Leia pointed out. "But I'm sure he avoided the same kind of background check most deserters get, both because of the war keeping us all so busy and because his intel was so helpful." Her eyes flicked to Luke. "But it's not just the way he talks. He—" She hesitated again. "He doesn't _feel _right, Luke."

Luke nodded slowly, fleetingly proud—Leia was keeping herself open to the Force's promptings. Maybe his instruction wasn't so bad after all. "Can you explain it more than that?" He urged gently.

Leia seemed to think about it, brow wrinkling, and then she shrugged helplessly. "No. I'm sorry, I can't. Right now I can't get much more than vague impressions from people, little pushes here and there." She pursed her lips. "He was—_wrong_, though, Luke. Something about him was just…_off_."

Suddenly Luke was overwhelmed with an urge to find some quiet corner of the galaxy and simply take a nap, far away from all the intrigues and suspicions and shadowy double intent that surrounded them more every day. "I believe you," he assured Leia, noticing that in his silence her expression was growing worried. "I wish I'd gone with you so we could pool our resources and get a better feel on the guy. Do you think I should go check him out?"

"Or we could just bring this to Ackbar," Lando suggested. "He may not be able to feel the things you two do, but he's seen enough to trust your instincts. Maybe he can get things moving without Cuf's intel guys."

"No," Leia said, her usual firmness and confidence back in her voice. This was politics, a playing field she could handle better than almost anyone. "The Alliance is suffering enough infighting as it is without adding suspicion about Cuf into the mix. We need a little certainty right now, and asking people to stop trusting him just like that wouldn't be healthy." She ran a hand through her hair. "My gut—or the Force—" she glanced wryly at Luke, smiling a little. "—is telling me that we should wait a while. With the whole galaxy so distracted right now, maybe staying here longer than usual won't hurt."

There was a brief silence, broken, predictably, by Lando. "Well, alright," he said with an air of resignation, throwing his hands up. "The Force hasn't steered _me _wrong yet. But let's keep our eyes open, yeah? If Cuf really _is _still with the Empire…"

"I know," Leia said uncertainly. "We could be in trouble."

A few minutes and more casual conversational topics later, Luke parted ways with his friends, rejoining the flowing crowds of AOH-113's narrow, dull gray durasteel corridors, and he wondered if anyone else realized just how much trouble they were already in.


	3. Chapter Two

The secret of the Super Star Destroyer _Executor_'s current mission, as it turned out, had been even more closely kept than Han Solo had believed.

Darth Vader, too, had been in the dark, until Grand Admiral Thrawn shared their purpose with the rest of the task force commanders.

And that was as unnerving, as maddening, as anything had been in the Sith Lord's life; a life that had begun at the bitter end of another, in fire, and pain, and hatred.

And betrayal.

_Betrayal._

Sitting in his private meditation chambers, chambers from which he had once commanded this, his former flagship, Vader's gloved fists clenched tightly. His cloak was removed, leaving only his black tunic, his helmet, and his stewing anger. The power of the Force crackled around him like a dark aura. It was as much for the safety of the Star Destroyer's crew, as for his privacy, that this chamber was sealed off; if anyone had wandered in, he might have lashed out at them, seeking desperately to exert some semblance of control over surroundings that he felt more and more detached from.

_Palpatine might as well have spat in my face._

Withholding such basic information from him— it was unprecedented, even in a student-master relationship founded on mutual distrust and ambitious schemes at the expense of the other. It was an insult, a wordless suggestion that not only was he a disappointment to be replaced, but unworthy of confidence, as well.

An insult, all the more insufferable after that fateful confrontation on the second Death Star, before the face of the galaxy had been irrevocably altered—

After the Emperor had tried to dispose of him.

Had tried to dispose of him through the hand of his own _son_.

Vader held up a hand trembling with suppressed rage and frustration and stared at it, tinted red, like everything else, through the eyes of his mask.

He'd been a slave to the dark side of the Force for decades now; he was no stranger to the cruelties beings were capable of. He'd committed countless cruelties of his own, recklessly abandoning all scruples because—well, what did he have left to lose?

Nothing.

Thanks, incidentally, to the Emperor.

But even with all of _his _darkness, the depths of the Emperor's soulless manipulations, and the ruthlessness of his quest for power, filled him with anger. There was no respect for the Sith Master in Vader's heart; there never had been, he realized. Only disgust, helpless and inactionable: because for all of his desire to be rid of Palpatine, he was the only person Vader had in a galaxy he'd forsaken and which had, in turn, forsaken him.

And that was what it all came down to, really, the bitterness, once-repressed, that had returned to fill his entire world after Endor. Palpatine had deliberately taken everything from Anakin Skywalker so that he would become Darth Vader. _Everything_. And now, as soon as Vader _had _something again—as soon as he discovered that his son lived, that some trace of his former self still existed, as soon as a faint and delicate hope had blossomed in a heart long given up on such things—Palpatine had tried to take _that_, too.

It was the last time Vader would play the fool.

_There's a reckoning coming, Palpatine, _the Dark Lord brooded, as he had hundreds of times over the last two years. _I know you feel it, too. When I return to Coruscant, one of us must die. _

_ And it will not be me._

He would capture the boy. He would capture Luke Skywalker, as his standing orders dictated, orders that had remained implicitly in place ever since the young Jedi had escaped their grip.

But it would not be Palpatine the boy learned to call master.

A sustained, muted buzzing sound interrupted his thoughts. Vader glanced impatiently at the speakers on his maw-like meditation pod. He knew that no one on the _Executor _could be blamed for his being kept in the dark—for them, it was a matter of following orders, and he would expect nothing less once he'd overthrown Palpatine—but in his current mood, such distinctions became hazy.

He reached out with the Force and flicked on the pod's intercom. "What is it?"

"Lord Vader," Thrawn's modulated voice replied. "We will be emerging from hyperspace shortly. We would be honored by your presence on the bridge."

Vader's lip curled. He wanted to dislike Thrawn, but the Chiss was making it difficult. Some of the more arrogant Moffs could have learned a thing or two from him about courtesy.

Without replying, he cut off the intercom and rose to his feet; a wave of his hand brought his cloak drifting to him from across the room. As it secured itself to his shoulders, he closed his eyes and reached out with the Force.

Yes, he could taste it in every molecule drifting in the air. This would be a day to remember.

Everything was about to change.

The door opened with a _hiss_, and Darth Vader swept into the corridor beyond, determined to have a shaping hand in that change.

* * *

The _Executor_'s bridge was strangely quiet. Crewmen whispered information to each other rather than calling it out; several looked frightened to interface with their computers too freely, lest their movements ruin someone else's concentration. Even the stormtroopers standing guard at various entryways and vulnerable consoles looked somehow more nervous than usual, checking equipment more often than was possibly necessary, repeatedly tightening and loosening their grips on E-11 blaster rifles.

Han almost didn't get it. They'd fought Rebels plenty of times in the past, and while it would be useful to have a few insurgent leaders locked up for questioning, it was hardly worth getting so anxious about.

Then he remembered how precious few victories the Empire had enjoyed in recent memory, and he understood. Everyone was waiting with bated breath to see if this operation would join a long list of failures, or become a rejuvenating success that would boost morale for far more than the crews of the five Star Destroyers hurtling toward a nondescript asteroid field in the Outer Rim.

Dimly, Han became aware that he was pacing restlessly next to the command chair, which was positioned in the center of the bridge walkway and currently occupied by Grand Admiral Thrawn. The blue-skinned humanoid was a stark contrast from the visible tension displayed by everyone else. He looked completely relaxed, sitting perfectly upright, uniform impossibly devoid of wrinkles, hands clasped easily in front of his stomach, watching the mottled hyperspace sky racing past the viewport.

"One minute to realspace," a navigations officer called out, wincing a little as her voice cut into the silence.

"Acknowledged," Thrawn said lazily.

With some effort, Han managed to stop pacing, ending up on the right side of Thrawn's chair. "Rowdy bunch, huh?" he muttered, hoping to lighten the mood—_his _mood, mostly.

"They have been watching their homes destroyed and conquered for the better part of the last two years," Thrawn said quietly. "Now they feel as though they finally have a chance to make a difference, however minor it may end up being. We will give them their victory today, Captain Solo."

"Yeah," Han said simply, wanting to point out a million things that could crush everyone's hopes—the vagueness of Thrawn's intel source for this mission, for one thing—but keeping his mouth shut, knowing that the Chiss was more than aware. "Hope your plan doesn't disappoint."

"I do believe I'm insulted," Thrawn said mildly. "When have my plans _ever _disappointed?"

And that _did _brighten Han's mood, because as hard as he scoured his memory he could not remember any such instance.

A resonating metallic _oomph-ah _drew into hearing range, coming closer and closer until Han turned to see Darth Vader striding up the bridge toward them, black cloak billowing, gloved hands hooked behind his belt. Falling into long-remembered protocol, he stiffened to attention, clicked his heels together, and raised his chin toward the Dark Lord, who lifted a hand—either in acknowledgment or dismissal—even as Thrawn, picking up on Han's cue, swiveled the chair around to face him.

"My lord," the Grand Admiral said, rising from his chair respectfully even though Han was almost positive he didn't have to do anything of the sort; the relation of their ranks in the Empire was vague, but he thought he'd discerned that they were of at least equal status. Such a thing wouldn't matter to Thrawn, of course, one of the only true gentlemen Han had ever met.

"Admiral," Vader rumbled in return.

After a moment, it was clear no further pleasantries were forthcoming, and Thrawn lowered himself back into the seat, turning to face the viewport once more. Han risked easing his posture and turned in that direction, as well, while Vader took up position on the opposite side of the command chair. In the back of his mind, Han imagined their trio must have looked almost comical.

"Five seconds," the navigations officer declared.

Thrawn stirred, letting his hands rest near the control panels on either arm of the chair; Vader crossed his arms over his broad chest, the constant rate of his breathing giving no hint to his anxiety level.

Han gulped.

"Exiting hyperspace."

With the usual jarring abruptness, the hyperspace sky transitioned into the countless white pinpoints of stars in the black vacuum.

Stars, and a small asteroid field.

They were mostly small in size, pebbles in a cosmic scale, but there were several of the large asteroids that smugglers and insurgents of all kinds saw as prospective hideaways, sizeable and stable enough to build on. Han's gaze immediately honed in on one, only the size of the tip of his thumb at their current distance, clustered near the center.

"Sensor readings?" He asked, willing himself to keep his expectations low. If Thrawn's intelligence source had been wrong…if they'd come out here for nothing, as Trenton had darkly speculated they might…

"Scanning now, captain," an ensign in the crew pit called up.

"Lord Vader?" Thrawn murmured. "Do your extrasensory abilities have any information to offer?"

The Dark Lord didn't answer, and for a moment Han thought he'd taken the question the wrong way, as a challenge instead of an honest request. But then he noticed that Vader was moving his head slowly from side to side, as though observing some data chart Han couldn't see—and, if he was really using that Force hocus-pocus, that was probably an apt description.

"He's here," Vader said, his powerful voice almost sounding soft. He turned his mask toward Thrawn. "Luke Skywalker is here. The Rebel base is indeed within the asteroid field."

Han felt his heartbeat pick up.

"Sirs," the ensign from before hailed them, plainly excited. "Readings are detecting technology indicative of a level-four settlement on one of the asteroids. Sending coordinates to navigation."

"Well, what d'you know." Han's lips twisted into a lopsided grin. He practically floated, so light was his step, over to his own command station, slightly off to the side of where he'd stood before. Electricity seemed to flow through his limbs as adrenaline began to pump into his system.

"Captain Solo," Grand Admiral Thrawn said. "Is my flagship ready?"

It was the traditional question-and-answer exchange the Imperial academy taught all its students, one that most officers didn't bother with; but Thrawn was not 'most officers.' "The _Executor _is at your command, admiral," Han replied dutifully, giving his mentor a nod.

The Chiss's red eyes glittered. "Then let the hunt begin."

* * *

Invasion.

Laying on his bed, snared in troubled sleep, Luke Skywalker's brow wrinkled. There was something in his mind, something that didn't belong—a presence that was not quite foreign, and not quite welcome—

_Luke_.

His eyes snapped open.

Luke threw himself forward so that he was sitting upright in bed. A hand flew to rest on his forehead, and he shuddered. That feeling of invasion, of another mind intruding on his own—of being probed…he hadn't felt it since Vader—

The young Jedi's breath caught in his throat.

"Father," he whispered, and then he scrambled out of his bed, pulling on his shoes with one hand even as he ran towards the exit of his quarters, taking out his comlink with the other.

"Leia!" he called into it. A buzzing sound was his response—jammed. Luke swore in a way that was quite unlike him and picked up his pace, blasting into the corridor—

To find it even more chaotic and packed than usual. Except, instead of a thick mob of people meandering casually from one location to another, AOH-113's inhabitants were running helter-skelter in every direction, shouting vague warnings Luke couldn't pick up on over the mayhem, several of them hefting blasters.

If the invasion of his mind and the jamming of his comlink hadn't been evidence enough, the chaos of the corridors settled it.

They'd been found.

Knowing that his friends would more than likely be in the center of the action, Luke swiveled on his heel and started making his way toward the asteroid base's command room. So fixated was he on pushing past panicked aliens gibbering in languages he didn't understand that he almost didn't hear the voice calling his name.

"Luke! _Luke, _for Force's sake, would you _slow down _a second?"

It was Wedge Antilles, and in situations like this, Luke was always relieved to see him. Wedge was one of his oldest friends in the Alliance, a black-haired and plain-featured ace pilot around his age, and, as it happened, the leader of the resistance's most fabled starfighter force—Rogue Squadron.

"Wedge," he shouted back, not slowing down; that was okay, though, because Wedge was working his way in the opposite direction, toward him. "What's going on?"

"Star Destroyer just popped out of hyperspace in our backyard," Wedge replied grimly, finally reaching him. "Our old friend, the _Executor_."

Luke's blood chilled. The _Executor _was one of the most massive war vessels he'd ever seen, and its appearance almost always went hand-in-hand with Vader's. "_Great_. So what's the plan?"

"What do _you _think?" Wedge shot back, already starting to edge his way past him. "We're getting the hell out of here. I'm gonna take the Rogues out to distract them as much as we can while everyone else evacuates. You coming?"

Luke opened his mouth to say yes—Jedi or not, piloting was still his first love, and he ached to be out there fighting with the others—but responsibility stayed his tongue. "I'd better go see where Leia needs me," he replied. He reached out and gripped his friend's forearm. "May the Force be with you, Wedge."

The Rogue nodded at him and ran off down the hallway. Luke watched for a second, fighting off an upsurge of fear—Rogue Squadron was good, the best at what they did, but they were still only a few starfighters against a Super Star Destroyer.

No. They'd gotten out of situations worse than this before. He would trust in the Force, and do what he could to help.

With a skid of his heel, he kept running.

* * *

For a few minutes, the _Executor _had appeared undetected; it plowed into the asteroid field with all the confidence borne by the best deflector shields and armor plating the galaxy had to offer, its elongated wedge-shaped hull plunging toward the Rebel base like a knife through butter.

That, predictably, didn't last too long.

"Captain, Rebel ships heading this way," the sensor officer, somewhere amongst the controlled mayhem of a war vessel's bridge in combat, declared. "Looks like…three squadrons of starfighters and three corvettes."

Han frowned. It could have been worse, but it was a much smaller force than he would have expected protecting an installation with so many valuable persons allegedly within. Either they were wrong about the leadership being here, after all—a possibility he certainly wasn't going to mention, with Vader standing right there, having declared that the Jedi Skywalker was present in the system—or the Rebels were spread thin, too.

"Launch all TIE fighter squadrons," he ordered, moving to interface with his command console.

"Belay that order."

Han turned around and blinked at Thrawn. The Chiss was known for his unorthodox naval tactics, but launching fighter squadrons in a situation like this, to deflect attention from the Star Destroyer and engage the small, hard-to-hit enemy starfighters, was just common sense. "Admiral?"

"We needn't risk the lives of our pilots here, Captain," Thrawn explained, watching the distant specks that were enemy craft drawing closer. "The _Executor _is more than capable of sustaining the damage a task force of this size might inflict. Continuing to push toward their base and prompt evacuation is our only concern."

Han gave him a wounded expression. "You want me to just sit here and watch them pummel my ship?"

Thrawn cocked an eyebrow.

"I _just _put a new coat of paint on this thing," Han pressed.

"My apologies," the admiral said, deadpan.

* * *

The command center of AOH-113 was, if possible, even more hectic than the corridors leading to it. Luke winced reflexively as the hatchway hissed open to admit him, allowing a torrent of shouting, footsteps and computer sounds to bombard his ears.

It was, at least, easier to navigate than a cramped hallway. The room was laid out in a wide, three-layered oval, with the upper two layers housing dozens of crewing stations and the bottommost layer containing a conference table, a few more computers, and a large holographic tactical display. Spanning the entire far wall was a massive viewport looking out into the asteroid field—

And, presently, the ever-growing hulk of a Super Star Destroyer.

Luke dragged his eyes off of the menacing shape and peered around, looking for Leia. It didn't take long to spot her, exactly where he would have guessed she'd be: down on the bottommost layer, with Lando and the rest of the command staff, mostly clustered around the tactical display. He jogged down the steps, nearly bumping into a cluster of Sullustans arguing over a datapad.

He didn't even have to call out—Lando suddenly broke off from the others and headed in his direction, face set tensely.

"Lando," Luke said, panting lightly. "I tried to raise you guys on the comlink, but—"

"Jammed, yeah, I know," Lando cut him off, glancing out the viewport, where tiny flashes of light indicated that laserfire was beginning to be exchanged. "_Spast. _A Super Star Destroyer. They really pulled out all the stops on this one. Looks like Leia was right. The delays on moving out of here weren't just a coincidence."

"Sure looks that way," Luke said somberly. "But we can sort that out later. Right now, we've gotta get out of here."

"I'm gonna go warm up the _Falcon_," Lando told him, referring to the _Millennium Falcon, _the old saucer-shaped YT-1300 freighter that was his pride and joy—and which had provided more than a few harrowing escapes for all of them. "You'd better talk to the others. They're all so busy arguing over evacuation plans and rendezvous points that I couldn't get a word in edgewise."

"All right. Be careful," Luke said. Lando jogged past him, and he made his way over to the holographic tactical display.

He'd known they didn't have a whole lot of ships defending the base, but seeing it all laid out starkly on the display was jarring nonetheless. Their token force of a few fighter squadrons and three small Corellian corvettes looked positively meager in the face of a single Super Star Destroyer. Apparently the Imperials thought so, too, because the display indicated that it hadn't even opened fire yet on the Rebels nipping at their shields.

Leia was standing next to Admiral Ackbar. The Mon Calamari officer, dressed in the same white tunic that he always wore over his reddish, amphibian-looking skin, was the finest strategist in the Alliance. Luke hadn't seen much of him, even though they'd both been stationed on AOH-113 for some time now. The admiral looked markedly tired, indicated by his subtle but unusual pallor and the way his breathing appeared slightly labored.

Luke felt a pang of sympathy. Him and his friends sometimes felt like they never stopped for a break, but Ackbar had a whole lot more on his plate than they did, managing a massive theatre of war against enemies that vastly outnumbered them—not to mention the politics that were an unavoidable part of his position.

"…just don't have enough ships to carry everyone," Leia was telling the Mon Cal urgently. "We've had a steady influx of engineers and refugees, and since we weren't supposed to be here for so long we weren't prepared. We _need _to call for help."

"Help from whom, Princess?" Ackbar rasped wearily, resting his flipper-like hands heavily atop the tactical display. "We're not the only ones in need of ships. If we called for help, we'd just be leaving another target helpless." He exhaled, a sound like water being taken in through a straw. "I'm afraid we'll have to make do with what we have."

"Is there anything I can do?" Luke asked quietly.

Both Leia and Ackbar turned to him in surprise. Apparently, they'd been so engrossed in logistics that they hadn't noticed his arrival. "Luke," the former said, regaining her composure immediately. She looked around. "Where did Lando go?"

"He went to prep the _Falcon_."

Leia opened her mouth to say something—but whatever it was, Luke never found out. At that moment, a deafening _crack _filled the air, and the base shook as though rammed by some gargantuan interstellar creature; lights and displays flickered erratically, leaving the entire command room briefly in darkness. Shouts and startled cries marked the reaction of most.

As soon as the lights had stabilized, Luke glared toward the Super Star Destroyer outside. "They're not messing around." He grabbed Leia's hand. "Come on. We've gotta go."

"He is right, Princess," Ackbar said before she could launch into the inevitable complaint. "Go. We don't have long."

Figuring that had settled it, Luke turned and started to walk toward the stairs, hand still clutching Leia's; but she remained rooted in place. "Not without you, admiral," she said, her lips pursed in a way Luke had come to recognize as a surefire indication that she wouldn't be swayed.

Ackbar's bulging eyes widened even more than they already were. "I must stay here," he sputtered. "I am the military commander of this installation, and—"

"And the Alliance can't afford to lose you," Leia inserted, her voice now low and urgent. She cast a look at the rest of the command staff clustered around the display, who were watching the exchange silently. "That goes for all of you. We've lost far too much already. If you were captured here—or worse—the Alliance would be much worse off."

Ackbar worked his wide mouth several times, looking around at the others.

"If you all come with us on the _Falcon_, it'll save room for others on the evac ships," Luke piped up. "Every seat helps. But we have to go _now_."

Leia gave him a look of silent gratitude. Ackbar seemed to deflate. "Very well," he conceded. He gestured at the gathered staff. "We will accompany them to their ship. But first—" He turned around, to face a Bothan hunched over a computer station. "See to it that all of our data banks are purged, and order our fighting ships only to continue their delaying action until they are in danger of losing shields. Either when that happens, or when the last evacuation vessel has cleared the base, they are to immediately retreat to the rendezvous point."

The Bothan acknowledged. Ackbar gave one last, reluctant look around the command room, and then started in Luke's direction. "Lead the way, Jedi Skywalker."

* * *

"That shield isn't giving an inch, Rogue Leader," commented the voice of Rogue Seven.

"Keep firing," Wedge Antilles ordered, wondering even as he said it why the Super Star Destroyer wasn't firing back on them. For over ten minutes now, the Rebel ships—his Rogue Squadron, made up of himself and eleven other X-wing pilots, along with two other, more mixed-ship squadrons and the three Corellian corvettes that made up the bulk of their firepower—had been fixing sustained fire on the _Executor_, zipping and weaving all around it to avoid return volleys that were inexplicably absent; the only turbolaser blasts had been directed at the distant asteroid base. Combined with the fact that no TIE fighters had been launched, Wedge was starting to get a bad feeling.

And anytime a _lack _of return fire and enemy fighters was more troubling than their _presence_, something was very, very wrong.

Wedge glanced down at the displays on his X-wing's console. The Star Destroyer hadn't even been slowed down by their delay tactics; it was moving inexorably closer to AOH-113. At its current speed, it would be able to start launching troop shuttles in a few minutes—or worse, depending on whether they wanted prisoners or not.

"What's your game, big fella?" he muttered under his breath.

Suspicions or not, there wasn't much he could do except keep firing.

So he did.

* * *

Darth Vader's eyes were closed, but he could still see.

_Luke._

He stretched his presence in the Force out all over the system, enough of a show to fill any Force-sensitive's awareness, even overwhelm it. That was good. It was what he wanted. His son needed to feel how powerful the dark side was, because for all of his seductive talk of redemption and light at Endor, they were far past that. The galaxy was a whole different place now, more brutal and savage—it was _darker_. They could only survive, they could only climb to the top, by being darker than anyone else.

_Luke. Come to me, my son._

A vague sense of resistance responded to him from the direction of the asteroid base, along with the desperate longing that characterized Luke's Force impression toward him. Guilt crept into Vader's world for a fraction of a second—the boy wanted a father, wanted so badly to find the good in him, and here he was trying to lure him into plans of coup and conquest—but he quashed the feeling instantly.

There was no room for weakness. Not anymore.

* * *

"Are you ever going to _fix _this hunk of junk?" Leia snapped, directing her voice down the corridor from the _Millennium Falcon_'s cockpit, where she, Luke, and Admiral Ackbar were seated in the navigation, co-pilot, and communication chairs, respectively.

"She _is_ fixed," Lando's voice snapped back, followed immediately by a loud _thud _and a hissed curse.

"Are we certain this ship will make an adequate escape vessel?" Ackbar asked dubiously, his eyes taking in the cockpit's homely-looking console arrangements with the air of one investigating a derelict ruin.

"You've seen it in action," Luke reminded him. "It's the fastest ship in the Alliance."

"Perhaps," Ackbar allowed. "But watching it in action and being on board are two very different things."

Just as AOH-113 took another glancing hit, leaving the hangar lights winking on and off spastically and several pieces of delicate-looking machinery falling over to inglorious deaths, Lando bustled into the cockpit and settled into the pilot's seat. "Alright, Luke, we're ready to go—fire her up."

Luke obliged, moving his hands over the various buttons and switches that his station provided while Lando did the same on his end. They were rewarded by the _Falcon'_s engines roaring to life. It was a sound Luke had learned to love, often meaning—as it did now—that they were about to get out of a tricky situation.

"This ship is going to give me an ulcer one day," Leia remarked as Lando chuckled in satisfaction.

"This ship is about to save our hides, _again_," Lando retorted sanctimoniously. He turned partly in his seat to wink at Ackbar. "Strap in, Admiral, you're in good hands."

"Force save us," the Mon Cal grumbled.

Lando pushed the acceleration lever forward, and the _Millennium Falcon _blasted into the starfield beyond the hangar, leaving AOH-113 behind forever.

* * *

A new reading caught Han's eye on his command station. "That's it," he told Thrawn. "The last life readings have left the base."

The Chiss nodded, eyes fixed somewhat dreamily on the Rebel starfighters darting like gnats around the _Executor_. "Their fighters will pull back momentarily," he said. "Once they've gone, leave three shuttles of troopers to secure the asteroid and mine for data."

"Got it." Han keyed in the order, and turned back to the viewport. Now they would see if Thrawn's plan worked.

* * *

An asteroid half the size of the _Falcon _glanced off its deflector shields, leaving the ship swaying momentarily and several startled exclamations sounding from the lounge area currently housing AOH-113's command staff, including a rather prissy complaint that could only have belonged to See-Threepio.

Lando let out a low whistle and laughed. "Forgot how much fun it is to fly through an asteroid field."

"'Fun isn't the word I would use, General Calrissian," Ackbar said stiffly.

Luke's console beeped urgently, and he leaned in close to read the data scrolling across it. "Uh oh," he said.

Leia peeked over his shoulder. "What does _that_ mean?"

Luke was saved the trouble of answering by Lando's loud oath and the sensation of being pressed back into his seat as the gambler swerved the ship sharply into a new direction. "We got company!" he barked.

Beyond the viewport, blocking their exit from the asteroid field, was a Star Destroyer. One of the smaller builds—a _Victory_-class—but more than enough to handle a single YT-1300 freighter.

"What, a Super Star Destroyer wasn't enough?" Leia griped, her fingers deathly white as they clutched her chair arms.

"Of course not," Lando grunted, gunning the ship toward another possible exit vector. "Don't tell me you've forgotten how popular you are, they're trying to impress—_sithspit!"_

Luke grimaced, pushed back into his seat again as the _Falcon _plummeted straight down from its current heading to avoid flying into another Star Destroyer's tractor beam range.

"They're covering every escape route," Ackbar observed faintly.

"They can't do that," Leia said. "There's no way they can cover the entire asteroid field."

"Not perfectly, but effectively enough," Ackbar replied. "A single modern Star Destroyer has a wide tractor beam range. If a few are spaced out around the entire asteroid field—"

"Then they have a chance of catching us no matter where we go," Luke finished grimly. He looked at Lando. "We're gonna have to take our chances."

"Not so fast," Lando corrected, squinting at his console. "Look—the evac ships are all converging on that one vector."

Ackbar rose creakily to his feet to look at the display. "For good reason," he rasped, pointing. "That is the only route not covered by a Star Destroyer's tractor beam range."

"Not exactly subtle, is it?" Leia said.

"No," Ackbar agreed. "It has to be a trap."

"Maybe they just didn't bring enough ships to cover _every _point," Luke suggested hopefully. "So they covered the ones they thought we'd try."

"Doesn't matter what the reason is," Lando bit out, grimacing as another asteroid jolted the ship. "I'll take my chances with the unknown instead of flying straight into a Star Destroyer."

No one could argue with that logic. Luke closed his eyes, reaching out with the Force, trying to detect any warnings that they were about to fly into a trap, as Ackbar and Leia suspected.

There was, indeed, a feeling of a trap being sprung all around them.

The problem was, he got the distinct impression that they were already caught.

* * *

Wedge Antilles shook his head, juking his X-wing to the side to swerve around a cluster of the asteroid field's cosmic rubble. It was obvious the evac ships dead ahead were being shepherded by the Imperials—and they were going willingly right into whatever trap was set up for them.

Still, as long as Rogue Squadron was around, he wasn't ready to give the Empire this victory just yet. He shot a tight smile out his cockpit in the direction of one of the eleven X-wings flying all around him. The rest of the Rebel ships had, of course, followed Ackbar's retreat order and slipped past the _Executor_—conspicuously unharmed—to jump into hyperspace minutes ago; but Rogue Squadron had earned its name for a reason.

His helmet's comlink sent a burst of static into his ears for a moment, followed by the faint pickup of someone speaking through jamming. "Rogue Leader, this is Colonel Vikari on evacuation vessel RH-3566. Your orders were to retreat. Do you copy?"

"I copy, Colonel," Wedge assured him lightly. "But we figured you guys could use some help. Judging from the Star Destroyers surrounding the asteroid field, I'd say that we were right."

There was silence from the other end, and then what sounded like a wry chuckle. "You Rogues are more trouble than you're worth sometimes," the Colonel said. "You won't hear any complaints from me, Antilles. Thanks for the escort."

"Don't mention it." Wedge flicked off the comlink with a motion of his chin, and settled more comfortably into his starfighter's cockpit, tightening his grip on the steering controls. Whatever the Imperials had in mind, Rogue Squadron wouldn't let them get away with it too easily.

* * *

The _Millennium Falcon _quickly zipped ahead of the slower Alliance evac ships, and set to the task of maneuvering around the asteroids that marked the fringe of the field.

"I'm not picking anything up in this direction," Lando said slowly, peering at his readouts. "I dunno, Admiral, I think the Imperials might have made a slip-up. Maybe having a Super Star Destroyer went to their heads on this one."

"That is the _Executor_," Ackbar reminded him heavily. "If it is not Darth Vader in command, it is someone else of high placement. Do not underestimate them."

"Do you sense anything, Luke?" Leia asked quietly, leaning over the back of the Jedi's chair.

He shook his head hesitantly. "It's hard to say," he said. "Lately, it's been hard to pick out one dark patch in the Force from the—"

"We're clear," Lando whooped. Beyond the cockpit, the last asteroids fell behind them, leaving only clear space. A wide smile on his face, the gambler flexed his fingers and reached for the hyperdrive controls. "Strap in, boys and girls, we're about to ditch this party."

And that was when, out of nothingness, an _Imperial-II _class Star Destroyer appeared directly in front of them, its silver-white hull filling the viewport.

"What the—?" Lando gaped, fumbling at his controls. Luke was already on it, his reflexes honed by the Force, moving to maneuver the _Falcon _out of the Destroyer's range—

But it was too late.

"We're caught," he said tightly, jabbing in frustration at his console. "Tractor beam lock."

"I don't believe it," Lando said, sounding simultaneously awed and outraged. "Where did that thing _come _from? I didn't get any readings!"

"I don't suppose you did," Admiral Ackbar remarked, a foreboding tone of resignation in his voice. "Because the Empire has apparently obtained a cloaking device."

"A cloaking device?" Lando echoed incredulously. "That's impossible. The tech has always been too bulky and expensive."

"Let's debate this later," Leia interrupted them curtly, hovering between a sitting and standing position. "Come on—you've made so many modifications to this ship, surely you have _something _to get out of a tractor beam…"

The words died on her lips. Luke hadn't heard the last few words, anyway; he'd been too busy watching with something like disbelief as the other Star Destroyers, all four of them, moved neatly into encirclement postures around them and the helpless evac ships.

For years, they'd evaded Imperial fleets, dodged their way out of seemingly impossible situations, defeated forces much larger than their own—

But for the first time since he'd been brought aboard the second Death Star and taken before the Emperor, Luke Skywalker could not see any hope of escape.

* * *

His X-wing jerked to a halt so suddenly that Wedge's entire body slammed, hard, against his seat's straps. Blinking blurriness from his eyes, he toyed with his steering controls, with casual delicacy at first and then with increasing agitation. "What happened?" He barked.

"Tractor beam, Rogue Leader," one of his wingmates told him, sounding breathless. "That Star Destroyer, the one that came out of nowhere—must have been waiting to snare us—"

Wedge glared balefully at the hulking Imperial behemoth that filled the world beyond his cockpit. A spasting _cloaking device_? Since when did the Empire have anything like _that _up its sleeve?

He shook his head stubbornly. No, there was no way they were trapped, not now—not after they'd escaped so many situations like this one. It just didn't seem possible.

But luck, as Lando Calrissian was fond of telling him during games of sabacc, always ran out eventually.

"Blast it, Calrissian," Wedge muttered. "I hate it when you're right."

* * *

Han let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, his entire body slumping in relief, and let himself bask in the uncharacteristic expressions of celebration being passed all around the _Executor_'s command bridge.

It was a sight he very nearly couldn't believe. The entire Rebel force, trapped in the _Chimaera_'s enhanced interdiction beam, hovering helplessly in space, surrounded by Star Destroyers—and ripe for the picking.

It was the sight of a successful operation after an endless string of failures.

He turned to look at Thrawn. The Chiss was wearing his characteristically faint smile as he activated his chair's intercom system and spoke into it. "Well done," he said, and then flicked it off. It was as close as the crew of an Imperial vessel was prone to get to a head pat, and it would only enhance the heightened morale of everyone aboard.

Pride blossomed in Han Solo's chest, for the first time in far too long. There had been moments when the Empire he served appalled him, when he had gone so far as to consider deserting; but on a day like this, under the command of the Grand Admiral whose mentorship, and whose potential as a leader, was the only reason he stuck around, he could envision a day where the Galactic Empire inspired respect instead of fear and loathing.

Thrawn appeared to notice he was staring, and looked back at him with eyebrows politely raised.

Han shot him a smirk. "Figured out what you're gonna say in all your HoloNet interviews after this?"

Thrawn rose to his feet and walked over to the very end of the bridge walkway, so that his face was a mere foot away from the viewport. "There will be no time for HoloNet interviews, Captain," he said, and when he turned his face to look at Han, his eyes appeared to be glittering more brightly than usual. "We have a war to turn around."

Then, without warning, the bridge was flooded with flashing red light and the sound of klaxons, and a moment later an ensign's shrill words cut through a bridge that was suddenly otherwise deathly silent.

"Admiral! Incoming ship—no, _ships_—sir, incoming _fleet_!"

Thrawn's smile was gone. "Rebels?" His brow wrinkled. "That's impossible."

"No, sir." In the pulsing red light of the proximity alarms, the ensign's face appeared the very visage of ill tidings, an effect enhanced by the animal fear in his eyes.

"It's the Yuuzhan Vong."


	4. Chapter Three

Han's eyes widened.

The _Vong._

The mention of their name alone inspired two immediate reactions: loathing, for the aliens who so arrogantly were forcing their wills on the Empire, on the entire _galaxy_—and fear, because they were unerringly brutal, fierce warriors who fought to their last breath with no concept of defeat or surrender.

And because for two years their conquest had progressed ruthlessly, inexorably, with billions subjected and killed, entire planets rendered uninhabitable by their insidious bioweaponry.

Everyone else on the bridge seemed frozen in place for those first few seconds, unable to believe that their triumph had been so quickly reversed into a nightmare; and then Thrawn strode briskly back to his command chair and sat down. "Bolster shields," he commanded calmly, clearly refusing to let himself be shaken. "Give me readings on the Yuuzhan Vong force, sensors."

The words shook everyone out of their stupor. The crew pits burst into life, with one ensign shouting to be heard over the sudden flurry of activity. "We're reading ten cruiser-size analogs, admiral—twenty smaller frigate analogs—a dozen gunship analogs—"

"Enemy coralskippers launching!" Snapped another crewman. "Hundreds of them! Picking up over two hundred—"

"It's an _armada_," Han murmured dazedly.

"It's an ambush," Thrawn added ominously. "Direct your TIE fighter squadrons to launch, Captain."

"Sir." Han swallowed hard, willed his surging panic down, and directed a shout down into the crew pits. "Launch all TIE fighters. Do it _now_!"

* * *

"Luke," Leia's shout came from somewhere above and behind him. "I think you'd better take a look at this."

Luke shot a glance at Lando, who shrugged back at him, and then he pulled himself out of the access panel he'd been working on with the smuggler, tweaking the _Falcon'_s inner workings aimlessly in the hopes they might be able to come up with some way out of their predicament. The metallic clang of a dropped tool and Lando's fresh curse reminded him that they weren't making much progress.

Another reminder was waiting for him when he reached the cockpit at a jog—a reminder of who the real enemy in the galaxy was nowadays.

Filling the distant starfield was what looked like an asteroid field, similar to the one behind them.

One that hadn't existed when he'd left the cockpit a few minutes ago. "I hope that isn't what I think it is," Luke said.

Leia had moved up to the pilot's chair, with Ackbar standing behind her. She turned to look at him, her expression grim. "It's the Vong," she said quietly. "A lot of them."

As Luke watched, countless specks—resembling tiny asteroids—came into view, hurtling towards them. The Jedi's stomach flipped. Coralskippers. The Vong's equivalent to starfighters, coralskippers were of roughly the same size, but looked like wedges hewn out of stone, with flares to either side resembling wings and a membranous cockpit in which a single Yuuzhan Vong pilot directed the ship through a neural interface.

They were living, organic fighter vessels, and they were deadly.

"I am hard-pressed," Ackbar rasped detachedly, "to imagine how this situation could get any worse."

"It's pretty bad, all right," Leia commented uneasily.

_Worse than you might think_, Luke thought to himself. Leia had yet to pilot a starfighter in combat against coralskippers, but _he _had accumulated plenty of experience over the last two years. It was bad enough taking them on with a fully functional craft. To be stuck in a Star Destroyer's tractor beam lock when they showed up was as near to a death sentence as he could conceive.

"You'd better get on the quads, Leia," he said. "Me and Lando will keep working on getting us out of here, but if they start heading this way—"

"Better to have a little firepower than none," Leia finished, already leaping out of the chair. "Right."

Luke caught her arm on an impulse as she passed and spoke without thinking. "We're gonna be okay, Leia."

His sister's eyes searched his. She smiled a little. "Thanks."

She trotted down the corridor toward the laser quads. Luke remained rooted in place for a moment, wondering where the words had come from. Was it just a reflexive attempt to reassure someone close to him? Or had it been the hand of the Force?

Whatever it was, their situation sure didn't _look _like it would end well.

* * *

Commander Guntal Lah smelled blood on the air.

His, and the enemy's soon to be spilled.

He was monstrously tall, standing at over seven feet, all wiry muscle under his dark red _uruun_ cloth tunic and draping black cloak, his corporal form peppered with the decorative deformations that were a core part of the Yuuzhan Vong religion. Long, slender fingers wrapped around the the handle of a short, living blade, dragging its jagged edge across the palm of a gray-white and heavily scarred hand, offering his pain for the favor of Yun-Yammka, the god of war.

His nightmarish face—angular, bony, with a snarling mouth of needle-sharp teeth, lips pierced all along their length, yellowish eyes atop pronounced gray bags of skin, and flat bone where a human's nose might have gone—turned to watch his ship's resident priest address his warriors.

"Many cycles ago, his Terrible Majesty, Supreme Overlord Shimmra, was presented with a vision," the priest, Jentun, cried. Shorter than the warriors by a good head, and much more slender, he was clad in a flowing black robe of organic material; his face, like Lah's, was heavily scarred, to mark his religious fervor. All around him, warriors stood at attention, their own degrees of deformation varied, gray vonduun crab armor gleaming, snake-like amphistaff weapons coiled around their arms, listening raptly. "The gods showed His Exaltedness a distant galaxy, one full of lush worlds and bright stars, a galaxy we might call home! A place that might end our unjust exile in the cold darkness of intergalactic space!

"But this oasis, warriors, was _tainted!_" Jentun spat. The passion on his face contorted into disgust. "Infidels, with their _made-things_, with their non-living _abominations_, _infested _the galaxy of our salvation, mocking the gods with their ignorance!"

A roar of fury from the assemblage filled the bridge of Guntal Lah's warship, the _Deliverer, _a vessel of size comparable to the hateful wedge-shaped battleships of the infidel enemy but of entirely different construction; no sacrilegious dead metals formed the ovoid hull, but, rather, the living yorik coral granted the Yuuzhan Vong by their gods, scabrous and black. Great, spindly arms reached out from the surface, housing the yorik-et fighting vessels the infidels had taken to calling _coralskippers_.

"The infidels live in _ignorance _of the True Way!" Jentun continued, turning with a dramatic swish of his robe to behold the enemy ships clustered far outside the membranous viewing portal. "They shun pain, the one True Constant in the universe, the purest reminder of what the gods sacrificed to give their children life!

"And so the Supreme Overlord, in his endless wisdom, realized that the gods had not shown him this galaxy merely so that we might find a home at last. No, the gods were giving our people a _holy task_!"

The priest spun, holding his palms up toward the ceiling, lined with the plant-like lambents which provided the warship's dim internal lighting. The warriors watched him reverently, some of them appearing to hold their breath, more than one muttering prayer. They'd heard this all before—heard something like it, in fact, before almost every battle—but it never failed to captivate them, to stir the fervor of bloodlust within them.

"To prove our devotion to the gods, and _claim _what is ours by divine right, we must _cleanse this galaxy of infidels_!" Jentun bellowed.

His audience roared even more loudly than before, uncoiling amphistaffs and stamping them on the floor.

"The honorable task falls on _you_, warriors!" Jentun looked around at them, the many piercings on his pointed ears swaying. "The Supreme Overlord is the vessel of the gods' will, and _you _are his righteous blade! Do not waver! _Taan Yun-forqana zhoi!"_

"_Do-ro'ik vong pratte_!" Cried the warriors, answering the priest caste's battle cry with their own.

"To your stations," Guntal Lah thundered, and as the warriors dispersed, he beckoned with a curl of his fingers for Jentun to join him. The priest obliged, drawing his robes about him and following him to the blaze bug display—the Vong equivalent of a tactical display, with glowing insects whose changing colors, movements, and various sounds represented the battle situation. Currently, the overwhelming majority of the bugs were colored green, indicating friendly forces, while a pathetic contingent of red-hued insects gave visual confirmation to the dire straits of the infidels.

"Your portents prove true, Holy One," Lah said, his gravelly, sibilant voice falling into a respectful tone. The priests were closer to the gods than any but the Supreme Overlord himself, and were as such to be revered. He had been criticized many times by others in the warrior caste for his overtures to the priests, particularly Jentun; few commanders of his level allowed priests to reside aboard their warships, let alone confide in them so closely. More than once it had been insinuated that perhaps it was not Guntal Lah in command of the _Deliverer_, but the disciple of Yun-Yammka who hovered, omnipresent, at his side.

Such insults toward his strength would not be forgotten, but for now, Lah tolerated them. Jentun was a conduit to Yun-Yammka, the mightiest of the gods, as far as Lah was concerned, the Slayer who dictated the fortunes of war. And through that conduit, Lah would surely be blessed with eternal victory.

So far, the progression of the galactic invasion had not proven him wrong.

"Yun-Yammka smiles on us this day, Fearsome Leader," Jentun bowed. "As will the Supreme Overlord, I think, once you have delivered the One with Red Eyes and the _Jeedai_ to him."

"Yes," Lah hissed rapturously. The blue infidel with glowing red eyes had earned infamy among the Yuuzhan Vong, and the unique attention of Shimrra himself, for a grasp on matters of war that was rare among the cowardly natives of the galaxy. The obstacle he provided was unacceptable.

And then there were the _Jeedai_, an insult on their own level entirely. There were two of them, to their knowledge: one human with a green blade of light and, of greatest interest, another, black-clad infidel whose inexplicable, mystical abilities were combined with an insult to creation itself—for this _Jeedai _was by all accounts a combination of organic and machine, a human integrated with made-things and encased in a cold dead shell. They were on different sides of the civil war which had softened the galaxy for the Yuuzhan Vong, but both were heretics to be exterminated.

And both, by architecture of the divine, had been snared in their trap.

For the time being, Guntal's crèche-brother, Tsavong Lah, served as Warmaster for the entire invasion force…but perhaps, after presenting such worthy prizes to Shrimrra, that would change.

"And when the Supreme Overlord directs his beneficence toward you," Jentun pressed on softly, warmly, "you, in turn, will remember the Order of Yun-Yammka, and its place in your ascension."

"My glory is yours, and Yun-Yammka's," Lah assured him, inclining his head. "As I have long promised."

"You are a great warrior, Guntal of Domain Lah," the priest murmured, leaning in so close that his voice seemed to emanate from the depths of Lah's mind. "Greater, even, than your crèche-brother. Together, _we_ will clear the way for the conquest of this galaxy."

"And pave it with blood for the god of war," Lah whispered, shivering with anticipation.

Jentun's hand offered him a cognition hood. It was the primary means of controlling a Yuuzhan Vong warship, which, when slipped over his head, allowed him to communicate with the ship's warriors and shapers—those who created and maintained their living technology—as well as the ship itself. The infidels believed their despicable made-things to be advanced, but they could never match the connection between a ship's brain and the commander it was shaped to serve.

Lah accepted the hood, donned it, and immersed himself in obtaining a victory about which songs would be sung until the Yuuzhan Vong were as dust in the province of the gods.

* * *

"Watch it, Wing Leader, you've got one on your tail."

"I need support over here—my shields can't take another hit—"

"Careful, Thirteen, if you get too close that dovin basal will suck your shields right off—"

"There's—too many of them—"

"I'm hit! I'm hit! Going down, going do—"

Han's fists were clenched so tightly that it hurt, but he was far too lost in his own frustration and anger to care. Every word of increasingly desperate comm chatter from his TIE fighter pilots hammered against his senses like a gong-knell, leaving him wavering between an impulse to give up and run and an equally feverish desire to fight until his dying breath—to make the Vong _hurt_, as they'd done to so many people he knew.

"All turbolaser batteries, open fire," he snapped, directing the order to the bridge at large.

"But, sir, the enemy ships are not in range—"

"Just _do it!_"

Almost as soon as the order had been uttered, brilliant green turbolaser blasts began to pour out into the vacuum of space from all over the _Executor_'s hull, reaching for the still-distant but steadily approaching Vong capital ships. Han took a deep breath, feeling guilty for his outburst—the captain of a war vessel set the example for his entire crew; he needed to be calm and reassuring, not give them more reason to be anxious. He glanced at Thrawn, waiting for the mild lecture that would doubtless result from his behavior, but the Chiss was sitting completely still, staring straight out the viewport, his purple lips set in a thin line.

That was worrisome. The predicament had not yet presented itself that could distract Thrawn from performing his role of chiding mentor.

Then, quietly, Thrawn said: "Perhaps I spoke too soon, Captain."

"Admiral?" Han stared.

The Grand Admiral smiled sadly. "I do not think we will live to see this war turned around."

Han's heart froze. Grand Admiral Thrawn—the tactician who had done the impossible, time and time again—was giving _up_?

_No. _Han clenched his teeth. They had been too close to gaining a much-needed victory to let the Vong deflate them now.

Throughout his career, Thrawn had pulled him up from the brink of despair more than once. It looked like it was his turn to return the favor.

He took a long stride over to Thrawn's command chair and firmly grabbed his shoulder. "This isn't over yet," he growled. "Come on, you've got the mightiest warship in the Imperial Navy and four Star Destroyers out there. Put that crazy brain of yours to work and get these crewmen back home in one piece."

"There are Imperial forces in nearby sectors that are as yet uncontested," Darth Vader added, earning a surprised look from Han; he'd almost forgotten the Dark Lord was there. "If you call for their aid, they will come."

Thrawn continued staring straight ahead. Han took advantage of the silence to tighten his grip on the Chiss's shoulder. "You said it yourself, buddy," he said quietly. "We've gotta deliver a victory today."

"Don't you understand, Captain?" Thrawn said distantly. "We've been outmaneuvered." He frowned. "_I've _been outmaneuvered."

Han was so taken aback by the depth of the admiral's defeatism that he couldn't even argue; Vader, apparently having reached the same conclusion, turned on his heel, his black cloak flaring. "Communications," he rumbled. "Hail Imperial Center, and inform them that we have engaged the Yuuzhan Vong and require reinforcements."

"We can't, my lord!" An ensign called back frantically.

"Explain." The Dark Lord's voice adopted an ominous tone.

The ensign swallowed visibly, but plowed valiantly on. "I took the liberty of attempting to send out an automated distress signal, my lord—but nothing is going through. The HoloNet relay in the sector isn't responding."

Han's eyes narrowed. The sudden arrival of the Vong—the HoloNet relay being conveniently out of service at the same time—

"We believed we were springing a trap on the Rebels," Thrawn said, still sounding dreamy. "When all along, the Yuuzhan Vong were springing the trap. On all of us. Outmaneuvered."

Fresh anger surged through Han. He was sick and tired of this whole war, and if he was going to let it kill him out in armpit of the galaxy, he was a bantha herder. "All right then," he snarled, stomping back over to his command station. "Then we're going to run away before they can close their fancy trap. Helm!" He rose his voice. "Take us away from the asteroid field! Communications—get my task force commanders on the line."

The holographic representations of Captains Awler, Hansen, Pellaeon and Trenton had hardly appeared on his console before their panicked babbling started.

"Where did they _come _from?" Awler shouted. "Admiral, we are _not _prepared for an engagement with a Yuuzhan Vong fleet—"

"I warned you," Trenton said with so much sanctimonious indignation that it made Han want to puke. "I _warned _you that the intelligence on this Rebel base might not be what it seemed—"

"Oh, sod _off_, Ivynn," Pellaeon snapped. "You said nothing of the _sort_—"

"Our vessels are only _mid-range _cruisers, Admiral," Hansen said nervously, cringing every so often, probably in response to the fracas outside his viewport. "The Vong's plasma weapons will _tear through _our shields—"

"_Shut up!_" Han barked, earning shocked looks and—blissfully—silence. "We're getting out of here. Calculate a jump for Imperial Center and start—"

"Captain!"

"_What?_" Han roared exasperatedly, turning toward the voice.

It was the navigations officer, half-risen from the crew pit, a kind of dull shock in her eyes. "The engines, sir—they're not responding!"

_Gee, don't do me any favors, universe_. "What d'you _mean_, they're not responding?"

"Sabotage," Vader spat, making the word a curse.

Han ran a hand agitatedly through his already-disheveled hair, willing himself not to spew the diatribes bubbling up inside him—particularly not with the task force's captains watching via hologram. If he was going to die today, he wasn't going to give them more ammunition to go down thinking he was undeserving of his rank. "Keep trying!" He jabbed a finger toward another ensign standing nearby. "And get a maintenance team down there!"

The ensign dashed off like Han had just prodded him with a hot iron. Grimacing, the _Executor_'s captain turned back around to face his command station and the viewport. The explosions lighting the star-speckled black sky were drawing awfully close.

"This day just keeps getting better," he mumbled.

* * *

There was a sour taste in Wedge's mouth. Here they were, in the midst of a massive space engagement, and Rogue Squadron couldn't so much as twist in the right direction to shoot—though, on the other hand, he wasn't sure who they'd be firing at if they _could_. During the two years of the Vong invasion, some tentative suggestions had been made by idealists on both sides that the Empire and Alliance broker a ceasefire and focus on their common enemy, but emotions were still running too high. They'd been locked in a bitter civil war for so long that Wedge wasn't sure they'd ever be able to see each other as anything other than targets.

So maybe it was just as well that they were trapped. His Rogues were known for pulling some crazy stunts, but Wedge didn't particularly like the idea of taking on an Imperial task force _and _a Vong armada with just a few X-wings.

Idly, he wondered if he'd be ending the day in an Imperial interrogation room or floating atomized between stars.

* * *

"Hand me that hydrospanner!"

Luke blinked at Lando and hefted the aforementioned tool. "You mean the one you just gave _back _to me?"

Lando glowered at him and beckoned impatiently. "You heard me, come _on_—"

With a shrug, Luke obliged—but even the reflexes granted him by the Force weren't enough to prevent him from dropping it down the _Falcon_'s hyperdrive service shaft as another nearby blast shook the ship.

"Stang," Luke sighed, moving off to fetch it. Lando, however, tapped his shoulder and shook his head.

"Don't bother," the smuggler said wearily. "Look, Luke, the _Falcon'_s in perfect shape, all of her modifications are working correctly. Fact of the matter is, there's just nothing we can do. We're stuck unless something shakes that Star Destroyer's tractor lock on us."

Deep down, Luke realized he'd known that was the case, but it was still disheartening to hear it said aloud. By all appearances, he should have been panicking by now…but for some reason he couldn't explain, despair hadn't reared its ugly head. He felt, in fact, glacially calm—not exactly a standard reaction while pinned down and surrounded by enemies.

It could have been shock. But Luke thought it was more than that.

"Okay," he said.

Lando stared at him. "_Okay_?"

Luke nodded. "Okay."

"That's it?"

"Not much else to say, is there?" Luke countered. He saw the wary look in Lando's eyes and squeezed his friend's shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm not ready to lie down and die just yet. But there's no point dwelling on what we can't fix."

Lando still didn't look convinced. Luke pressed on. "Come on. Let's go back to the cockpit and see what happens. Maybe an opportunity will present itself."

Lando exhaled loudly, tossing a tool aside. "Yeah, all right. But for the record, this whole Jedi serenity thing is weirding me out."

The cockpit was exactly as Luke had left it a few minutes earlier; Ackbar was the only one still within, standing behind the pilot's seat and watching the battle raging outside with his flipper-like hands clasped behind his back. A light on the console assured Luke that Leia had indeed gone to the quad laser controls and remained there, ready for trouble.

"So what's new?" Lando asked, sidling into the pilot's seat and flicking a few switches. "Luke told me all about our new friends crashing the party—not very polite, showing up without an invitation."

"There are far too many Yuuzhan Vong ships for the Imperials to handle," Ackbar mused, his large eyes blinking. "They do not retreat, and yet they have not moved into turbolaser range to engage them directly."

Luke scanned the situation as best he could. The Star Destroyers were all completely motionless, locked into their encirclement positions around the trapped Rebel ships, all of them pouring endless waves of turbolaser fire toward the Vong armada; the Vong had by now moved nearly into range on their own, and several flashes of light among their ships suggested that the salvoes were doing some damage, at least. The melee of coralskippers and TIE fighters looked like some hornet's nest stirred, hundreds of glistening specks zipping around almost too quickly to follow, with the coralskippers spraying their blinding golden plasma projectiles and projecting the miniature black holes which absorbed enemy fire, and the TIE fighters stubbornly chipping away at them with green laser blasts and concussion missiles.

And judging from the shrinking number of TIE fighters, those coralskippers would soon be softening the Star Destroyers for their larger counterparts.

"That _is _weird," Lando mumbled, squinting at the massive shape of the _Executor_. "You'd think they'd take us and get out of here before it gets too hot."

"Engine problems, maybe?" Leia's voice crackled over the cockpit speakers.

"They were working just fine while they chased us out of the asteroid field," Lando reminded her. "That'd be some pretty bad timing."

"Pretty _convenient _timing," Luke chimed in. Now that he thought about it, it _was _pretty unlikely that a Vong armada would just happen on this remote part of space at the exact same time that the Empire and Alliance were locked in their own struggle.

Lando pursed his lips, and then, with a shrug, kicked back in his chair, locking his hands behind his head. "Well, the little Jedi on my shoulder told me that instead of running around in circles and screaming like my gut tells me to, we should just wait and hope for an opportunity, so that's what _I'm _gonna do. But in the meantime…" he looked innocently between Luke and Ackbar. "Any wagers on who leaves this system alive?"

* * *

"Run that by me again," Han ordered through clenched teeth.

"It looks like some kind of—_plant_, sir," the engineer in front of him said, his voice shaking a little—not, Han knew with certainty, out of any apprehension toward _him_, but because he was just as aware as the rest of them that their situation was looking decidedly grim. "Spread all over the engine core. Whatever it is, it's corroding the metals, and—" He shrugged helplessly. "This ship isn't going anywhere, Captain. Not without a major overhaul."

"You have a saboteur among your crew, Captain Solo," Darth Vader said darkly.

_No kidding_. "Why were we able to move until we left the asteroid field?" Han insisted, addressing the engineer. "You telling me this stuff just up and sprouted in a few _minutes_?"

The engineer hesitated. "I don't know, sir," he admitted. "The sabotage looks pretty thorough. The entire maintenance crew was dead by the time we got down there to check it out—and the surveillance equipment was all smashed up, too."

Information which didn't help them solve the mystery at all. For all their understanding of Vong biotech—and Han was positive it _was _Vong biotech—the plant-stuff could have been festering for months, hiding somehow from the maintenance crews until triggered by their saboteur—or the whole thing could have happened in the few minutes since they left the asteroid field.

And in the end, it wasn't important.

It was like Thrawn had said: _they _weren't the ones springing a trap today. It had been the Vong, all along.

With no engines, no ability to call for help, and fighting their way out impossible, they were indeed well and truly trapped.

Han Solo exhaled heavily through his nose and, finally, allowed himself something he'd denied ever since the Yuuzhan Vong had swept into the Battle of Endor and tossed the entire galaxy into confusion.

He gave up.

"Figures," he muttered, trudging over to his command station and resting his hands heavily atop it, bowing his head. "Should've known this whole thing was too good to be true."

* * *

The bridge fell silent again, Solo's simple display of surrender drawing everyone's full attention. Thrawn, who had remained utterly stationary for the last five minutes, stirred. The Chiss rose to his feet, straightened his uniform, and faced the crew.

"Forgive me," he said after a moment, his quiet voice barely audible over the dull thunder of laser fire. "In hopes of leading you all to victory, I have led you instead to ruin." He bowed his head. "Forgive me."

The silence seemed, in some paradoxical way, to grow even louder. The muted tones of computer responses seemed to come from far away; the entire universe moved, for an instant, far beyond Darth Vader.

_The end comes _here?

It was so easy, a teacher had once told him, for intricate plans to fall apart. The irony of the statement had amused Vader greatly later in life, for that same teacher had died in the aftermath of just such an intricate plan…but now, he could see the truth of it.

There would be no coup. He would never teach his son the ways of the dark side, never strike Palpatine down with a vengeful blade, never make the Empire _his_, as he'd feverishly desired since that day long ago on a planet of fire and ash, before losing himself forever.

Perhaps, he reflected, that was not such a bad thing.

Motion from the holographs of Awler, Hansen, Pellaeon and Trenton caught Vader's eye, and he looked their way just in time to see Hansen's visage disappear—going, no doubt, to take his chances and try to run, with or without the rest of the task force.

"It has been my honor to command all of you," Thrawn said softly, meeting Solo's gaze briefly, and then Pellaeon's. He appraised the _Victory_-class Star Destroyers' captains. "Your engines are still functioning, are they not?"

"Yes, sir," Awler said warily.

"But I ask that you do not order us to run," Trenton added. "For I have never disobeyed an order before, and I would rather not start now."

The Grand Admiral smiled his subtle smile—tinged with sadness, Vader thought—and inclined his head.

One of the crewmen shot to his feet, sending his chair skidding back violently. His face was set in a mask of defiance. "I don't want them to take us alive, admiral."

A low murmur of agreement rose from the other crewmen. The navigations officer rose, too. "I'm okay with dying today, sir," she said, her voice low and trembling. "But I don't want to be some—_sacrifice_." She shuddered.

"Fight to the last man!" A voice shouted from the back of the bridge, and several loud exclamations of assent greeted it.

And in that instant, a memory locked into place in Vader's mind.

"There is a way," he said slowly, everyone's eyes turning to him, "to ensure that no one leaves this battle alive."

He told them how they would die, and they listened.

* * *

Lando had dropped his veneer of casual detachment pretty quickly once the Yuuzhan Vong capital ships drew into firing range. The massive ovoid yorik coral cruiser analogs opened up first, spewing terrible waves of golden destruction into the cosmos; as the deadly projectiles traveled the distance to the Star Destroyers, they swallowed whole the few remaining TIE fighters whose valiance Luke found himself admiring for the first time in his life.

A life which appeared to be on the verge of ending, one way or another.

He closed his eyes and tried to picture Ben Kenobi, his Aunt and Uncle from Tatooine, the various friends he'd made and lost during the course of the crazy ride that the Rebellion had been…and he felt completely at peace.

_So that's what it was._

_ Not a hint of the future. Not a sign that we're going to get out of this._

_ The serenity of the Force._

_ The serenity I saw on Ben's face before Vader struck him down on the Death Star._

"Come on, Vong, baby," Lando muttered nervously, his fingers flexing atop the steering controls. "Just do me a favor and shoot a nice plasma blast at this Destroyer's tractor array…"

"Jedi Skywalker," Ackbar said, now slumped in the communications chair, his flippers clasped over his stomach. "Do you remember what you told me after General Rieekan died?"

Luke frowned at him. Of course he remembered; the General's death had been a tragedy for the Alliance, and the memorial service, held on the beautiful garden world of Ithor, was one of his most poignant memories. "Yes. I told you not to mourn him. That he was one with the Force."

Ackbar's head nodded up and down slowly, a gesture he'd picked up from working with humans for so long. "It sounds nice," he rasped softly. "It has been a great comfort to me for some time now."

"Whoa, there," Lando interrupted, laughing nervously. "Don't go getting all fatalistic on me, admiral, we ain't dead yet."

Luke sensed Leia before she entered the cockpit and sat quietly down behind him. Lando glanced at her, did a double take, and swiveled in his chair. "Hold on, if you're not on the quads, then who—?"

"I don't know," Leia told him, staring straight ahead at the dazzling exchange of destructive power being exchanged between the _Executor _and the largest Vong ships. "A few people on the admiral's command staff offered to take over, so maybe one of them did." She looked at Luke, her eyes glistening. "But I wanted to be up here."

Luke smiled at her and grabbed her hand; she squeezed it hard. It was such a shame that he hadn't known she was his sister for so long. It was a greater shame still that their entire time since gaining the knowledge had been spent in constant conflict. There was so much more he could have learned about her…

A loud trilling from the cockpit computers broke off his thoughts. Lando leaned in toward his console, eyes widening, and then his head jerked up to look at the Super Star Destroyer whose shields were beginning to flicker erratically under the Vong onslaught.

"Sith me," he breathed. "They're pouring all their power into their reactor."

* * *

Guntal Lah bared his pointed teeth in a predatory smile as he watched the infidels struggle futilely against the might of the Yuuzhan Vong. Yet again, the gods had validated their children's belief in them; yet again, the evidence that the True Way was the supreme force in the universe presented itself in the defeat of its enemies.

Their fighting, admittedly, had been spirited. Of course, if their despicable wedge-shaped made-thing had not been sabotaged, they would have tried to run—as one of the vessels was attempting to do even now, turning away to flee back into the asteroid field, showing the ultimate dishonor in deserting both battle and its own comrades—but at least it could be said that not _all _infidels were completely devoid of warrior's spirit.

All it took to bring it out was to back them into a corner from which there was no escape.

_Crush the fleeing cowards_, he ordered his armada through the cognition hood clinging to his face, pulsing with the life that flowed through it. _And prepare to board the other made-things. _

_Capture those who do not resist for sacrifice. Take the One with Red Eyes and the Jeedai alive._

_Kill the rest._

* * *

Han stared out the viewport of the _Executor_, standing before it with his hands clasped behind his back, just as he had a day ago, when Grand Admiral Thrawn had approached to tell him about a mission whose objective was a mystery.

He found he was not sad about dying. Wistful, maybe. But he figured that was just the usual organic attachment to the familiar.

When they went out, they would do it in a blaze of glory, the kind that had captivated him in holovids as a kid. They would take an entire Vong armada with them, one last act of resistance against the invaders. A nice dose of their own medicine.

He would go out making a difference. Just not the one he'd planned.

The bridge was no longer silent—was painfully loud, in fact. They were overloading the reactor to force the _Executor _into self-destruction, and the ship's computers did not like that; klaxons blared, lights flashed, and crewmen were dashing about making all sort of final preparations. Many were crying. Others were sending subspace messages out into the cosmos, last words for loved ones who might one day receive them.

But even with the din, Han heard Thrawn's voice from close by. "I suppose I owe you an apology, Captain Trenton."

The hologram of Trenton, still projected on Han's command station, shuffled his feet awkwardly. "As I owe you, Grand Admiral," he said, the bluster gone from his words. "You couldn't have known. It was…my privilege to serve under you. However briefly."

"It is a good death," Captain Awler said, standing with a straight posture that was all Imperial pride—and for once, Han was not annoyed by it. "Let it be an example to the Empire—that we will _not _bow to these savages."

Thrawn nodded gravely at Awler. He turned to regard Pellaeon's likeness. The two stared at each other, unspeaking. Then Pellaeon simply gave the Chiss a warm smile, nodded at Han, and disappeared.

"He never did like goodbyes," Thrawn murmured with something like fondness.

Han smiled crookedly. It felt surreal, knowing that he was smiling seconds before his death. "You'll have to talk to him about that when we get there."

Thrawn had moved up next to him. His glittering eyes looked at him. "Where?"

"Y'know. Where we're going."

"Ah."

They didn't say anything for a moment.

"We could have done it, you know," Thrawn said. "We could have changed the Empire. Made it better."

Han smiled again and patted his mentor firmly on the back. It was one of their oldest dreams, one Thrawn often mentioned while having idle discussions with his protégés in the privacy of whatever ship's quarters they had available at the time. "I know," he said. "You're the only reason I stuck around, you know. If it wasn't for you, showing me there's some decent people hidden around here..."

Thrawn's lips curled up into his own faint smile. "You're too kind. It was you who showed me that for all its excesses, the Empire still had hope."

Overhead, a dull rumbling sounded. Several conduits fell with a loud crash from the ceiling, clattering to the floor and hissing vapor. Han watched the conduits skitter around violently on the bridge walkway, completely unattended. Maintenance was never where you needed them.

A blue hand extended into the periphery of his vision. He glanced down, and then up to Thrawn, who had turned to face him and was offering the hand. "May warrior's fortune smile on you…Han," the Chiss said.

It was the first time Han had ever heard the Grand Admiral address him by his first name.

Annoyingly, he found that it had grown difficult to swallow.

He firmly accepted the hand, hoping that all of his gratitude and goodwill was communicated through the gesture.

"Reactor going critical!" A crewman bellowed over the general din of the bridge, conspicuously the only one still manning his station. Perhaps he'd decided it was as good a place to die as any. "Massive failure in five seconds—"

* * *

The fleeing infidel ship was being swarmed by coralskippers, all of them relentlessly spitting their plasma fire at every inch of its surface; the wedge-shaped abomination was drifting crookedly in the vacuum, the glowing blue of its accelerators flickering, several pieces of the hull breaking off to drift aimlessly into the asteroid field.

The other ships, the ones who had stood fast and fought, had stopped firing. They had accepted their fate, and waited to accept the judgment of the gods.

Guntal Lah would deliver it to them.

He directed his ships, and they all swarmed like some terrible cloud of dark intent toward their victims.

* * *

The _Executor _was venting smoke, and Luke knew most of it wasn't from damage inflicted by the Yuuzhan Vong. He could feel the fear, the sadness, the defeat from everyone in the warship's crew, flooding the Force—but most of all, he could feel their resolve.

"The Empire's always been a sore loser," he commented lightly into the stunned silence of the _Millennium Falcon'_s cockpit.

Everyone turned to look at him incredulously—and then Lando burst into laughter. He turned his chair around, put a hand on Luke's knee, another on Ackbar's shoulder, and smiled at Leia. "I ever tell you—"

"That our luck has to run out sometime?" Leia interrupted, voice dry but a fond smile on her lips. "You might've mentioned it once or twice over the years."

Lando chuckled.

Luke stretched out with the Force, tried to amplify the feelings of friendship and courage in the cockpit—

* * *

"Two seconds!"

Darth Vader closed his eyes, prepared to meet his doom, and found he was not surprised that the last face his mind conjured up from memory was not the Emperor, or anyone from his life as a Dark Lord of the Sith.

It was his son.

And for the first time, he truly opened himself in the Force, and felt Luke reach back with a hesitation instantly replaced by unconditional love, and he realized he'd done everything wrong.

* * *

Wedge finished sending out a subspace message for his family, took a deep breath, and clicked on his comlink.

"Rogues," he said, "I think we've earned a vacation."

"I'm glad you never tried to make a living in comedy, Wedge," one of his wingmates commented tiredly.

Wedge raised an eyebrow and laughed.

* * *

"Reactor critical! Take this, you Vong _bastards_—"

A roaring filled Han Solo's ears, everything turned black, and he knew it was over.

**A/N: **And that concludes the 'intro' to the Star Wars portion of this story. Up next: Mass Effect.


End file.
